It is often desirable and even necessary to drain liquid refrigerant from commercial and industrial refrigeration systems for repair, refurbishment or removal of such systems. Commercial and industrial sized systems often have a liquid refrigerant capacity of hundreds to thousands of pounds. Previously, liquid refrigerants were simply drained or pumped into open containers permitting spillage of the refrigerant and essentially unrestricted release of the refrigerant vapors.
More recently, with knowledge of its potential for harm to the environment, liquid refrigerant recovery systems have been introduced by several suppliers. However, such systems have tended to be quite complicated including components for refurbishing the liquid refrigerant and through which the refrigerant must be passed itself. Such systems often employ compressors, heavy filters and/or distillers. While such systems might be cart mountable, they tend to be cumbersome and heavy. In many instances, there is simply no need to refurbish the refrigerant. Instead, all that is needed is to remove the liquid refrigerant from the system quickly, to prevent its contamination or continuous venting into the atmosphere, while the unit is repaired.